The Force Is Back

Well, I'm finally starting to calm down.

What happened is that last week I bought the latest release of the original Star Wars trilogy. This actually makes the third set I own, including a limited edition and individually numbered VHS box set from ten years ago. What was supposed to make this one different, however, is that it contains the actual original theatrical releases as they appeared in 1977, 1980, and 1983. In other words, without the additional footage that was added for the re-releases in the late '90's.

So earlier this evening I popped disc one into my DVD player and sat back to watch young Luke Skywalker do battle with the evil ones. I immediately became suspicious when that famous opening scroll began with "Episode IV: A New Hope." That subtitle was NOT in the original 1977 release.

As I kept watching, my alarm only grew as more additional footage kept showing up: In the cantina scene, Gredo shoots first, then Han shoots back. In the original, Han was the only one to fire. Also, Jaba the Hut briefly shows up, whereas in the original original trilogy he didn't show up till Return of the Jedi.

Needless to say, I was furious. I began cursing at George Lucas and damn near threw a lamp at the TV.

As it turns out, however, I went to war without all the facts. True, that's not the first time that's happened in the history of the world, but at least when I did it, tens of thousands of people didn't end up dying and the United States wasn't condemned by the international community as a rogue nation.

Turns out that those original theatrical versions are on the bonus discs. In my defense, how was I supposed to know? When I buy DVD's, I'm only interested in the movies themselves. Forget the bonus crap.

And the good news is that these are truly the original versions, completely intact and with no added footage. By the same token, there's no "digital remastering" whatsoever of them, and poorer image quality is readily apparent.

Guess sometimes you need to be careful what you ask for.